|
Virtual Newsroom: The initial sign-on screen of Utusan's content management system.
A virtual newsroom appears in
Malaysia, and it's an inside job
HONG KONG -- You've heard it before: Technology will save us time, money and labor. These days, that's a hard sell to upper management at many newspapers, but the believers at Malaysia's Utusan newspaper group were persistent, and now their plan to create a virtual newsroom is well under way.
Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a city with 1.8 million people, Utusan circulates 250,000 newspapers daily and 500,000 on Sunday as publishers of Utusan Melayu, Utusan Malaysia, Mingguan Malaysia and Utusan Express.
Once the full plan is implemented, the in-office editorial staff will be reduced from 400 to 50. Most of Utusan's editorial employees will be working from their homes or the road.
"Utusan's virtual editorial project is more than halfway through," Tan Sri Kamarul Ariffin, Utusan's chairman, said earlier this year. "We expect that by Dec. 31, 2002, the whole project will be in full steam. During this transition period, we are procuring equipment and the necessary tools, rewriting manuals, retraining staff and, above all, conditioning ourselves to the modern digital age."
The primary tool for Utusan's ambitious plan is the work of Noridzan Kamal, Utusan's senior manager of group management information systems and software development, and her small team of three developers.
Kamal holds the patent to the Virtual Newsroom (VNR) system (http://www.utusan.net.my/), a custom content creation and asset management system developed entirely at Utusan. The Utusan staff has been using the VNR system since October 2000.
Ariffin and Kamal spoke about the virtual editorial project at the World Association of Newspapers conference held here last summer.
"The project started in 1999 because of Asia's economic slowdown," said Kamal, who has been working in information technology for 10 years and was a senior systems engineer and project leader at Fujitsu Malaysia before joining Utusan. "We didn't want to lay off people."
Kamal said the Utusan team was looking for ways to create a more efficient system when they ran across an article by Kerry Northrup about the idea of virtual newsrooms. Northrup is the executive director of Ifra's Center for Advanced Operations.
"We had Mr. Northrup come to our offices and speak to our managers and the editorial team about the subject," she said. "That helped us think about what might be possible."
It took 12 months to convince Utusan's editor that the cost savings alone would be worth the investment in developing the plan. Kamal said it took her team eight months to create and implement the system.
"The first thing we did was brainstorm about workflow, which was our main objective to reduce operating costs," she said. "We knew it would completely change workflow. We needed to develop a system for the reporters to write stories at home, then allow the assistant news editor to browse all the stories coming in."
Oracle, Linux, Perl, XML
What resulted was a collaborative, browser-based system with an Oracle database built on a Linux platform. Written in the Perl scripting language and using eXtensible Markup Language (XML), the system is fully integrated with Utusan's other systems. This includes its pagination system, originally from Cybergraphic (which is now part of Media Command Inc. of Tampa, Fla.).
Kamal said VNR incorporates a short message service (SMS), along with wire feeds, the duty roster, photo and archiving. The system takes three seconds to transmit a 10-megabyte file. Next up for development is video management.
Since VNR is so new, Kamal relies on steady feedback to help her team continue to refine the system.
"In addition to the feedback we get during the staff training," she said, "we also have a steering committee that meets weekly to monitor problems and progress."
Ariffin attributes the system's success to management's vision, effective communication facilities, the availability of the necessary hardware and software, and the staff's willingness to learn new skills and adapt to change.
"With the acceptance of the concept of the virtual editorial, we have to effect many changes, [from] the style of work, including working hours, to assignments given to our writers, and to the workflow of the whole editorial department," he said. "As long as the journalist fulfills the assignment given to him or her, and files his or her report with the editor, there is no necessity at all for the journalist to be physically present at the editorial office."
In addition, Ariffin said the reporters have direct access via the Internet to Utusan's library and resource center, and to editors, over the telephone or by chatting on the computer.
Utusan subsidizes the equipment necessary for the virtual newsroom, such as laptops, phones and access to the Internet. On the VNR system, every reporter is given a personal identification password to access the web site. On log-in, the user has access to assignments, a calendar, the short message service, web mail and other choices, depending on his or her level of access.
Northrup said while such a network takes information that exists in nondigital format and turns it into a more valuable and powerful digital asset, journalistic quality can benefit, too.
"In a newsroom with no virtual options, a traditional reporter at the scene of a story is often forced to get back to the office in order to write and file the story in time for deadline," Northrup said. "In that case, some of the details of the story may be sacrificed.
"However, if a reporter is equipped with a wireless laptop that connects to editors, archives, research materials and other resources, he or she can file from the scene with the latest information. That directly affects the quality of the newspaper's content."
Once a story is ready, a Utusan reporter uses VNR's news desk module to transmit the story to the main editorial office, where an editor can view, edit, comment on and commit the story to the back-end system. Finally, the editor-in-chief and his staff give final approval to the content and layouts before transmitting them to regional printing plants.
Ariffin believes that with the advent of computer technology and the availability of necessary infrastructures in Malaysia, it makes no sense for Utusan to remain loyal to an antiquated system of gathering and publishing the news.
"When our editorial staff realized that they need not have to spend a good part of their time stuck in traffic jams or in crowded offices, but instead could usefully spend more time with their families, and that their new working tools were very user-friendly, their response to the idea of virtual editorial suddenly became very positive," he said. "When our editor-in-chief discovered that he could edit and decide on the layout of all our newspapers from far away places like Havana, Cuba, instead of Kuala Lumpur, we could not stem the tide of his enthusiasm."
Cost savings
While the benefits of avoiding traffic jams and endless news meetings are attractive, there's no denying the cost savings of the virtual system, Ariffin said.
"The advancement of computer technology in the last two decades of the last century has enabled newspaper companies such as Utusan to transform not only its workplace from an overcrowded hovel to a nearly empty editorial suite, but also to trim off-take time for printing," he said. "With careful planning ... the human-power requirements could be halved."
Kamal agreed.
"We have already saved in space and in the cost of licensing software," she said. "We had 12 bureaus with three to four reporters each, and the office maintenance was expensive. The reporters have moved out of those bureaus already. In all, we are going to save about 2 million ringgits [US$527,000] in the first year."
While Northrup acknowledges that a virtual newsroom can help a newspaper cut costs, he says it's also about collaboration, coordination and communication to enhance quality.
"Utusan is taking the virtual newsroom concept farther than any other newspaper I know of right now," Northrup said. "But 'virtual newsroom' has become a phrase that means something different to different people.
"Cox Newspapers' CoxNet is a system that uses a big wide area network to exchange stories, packages and other information between Cox newspapers. It's enhanced with a couple of interesting tools, such as the Editorial Budget Tool and AdShare, that make editorial, advertising and marketing information available across the network."
Northrup also advises that while a virtual system frees a newsroom from its journalists, it can also free the journalists from their newsrooms.
"We're going to see more and more outsourced newsgathering operations like www.correspondent.com," he said. "Journalists are now capable of marketing their work all over the world.
"In the end, virtual newsrooms are about creating the flexibility to apply resources where and when you need them."
While Utusan may be cutting its newsroom costs, saving money may not be the only way VNR will pay off. There are plans under way to sell the system externally. Through sister companies Asia Online and VNR Media Technologies Inc., VNR should be available commercially by January 2003.
"And we're not necessarily limiting ourselves to the Asia-only market," Kamal said.
-- Linda Crider, lcrider@colepapers.net
Utusan Newspaper Group,
{011} (60-3) 22107055;
e-mail: online@utusan.com.my.
| 
